The Delaney Hall Detention Center is located next to a sewage treatment plant and a garbage dump in Newark, N.J. The proximity was too much for Kathy O’Leary to ignore. “This is a dump,” the Pax Christi New Jersey member said, unhappily appraising the Immigration and Customs Enforcement site. “This is where we dump our refugees, and that should tell you what our elected officials…think of our brothers and sisters,” she said.

“This is a disaster that was man-made.”

Signs reading “Keep Families Together” and “United in Love” lined Doremus Avenue in Newark on Oct. 22. About 100 Catholics gathered outside the detention center, part of the nationwide “One Church, One Family” campaign jointly organized by the Ignatian Solidarity Network with 16 other partner organizations. Bishops, nuns and lay activists came together in an act of solidarity with the migrants currently enduring the Trump administration’s immigration roundup.

Ms. O’Leary started off the public witness with powerful testimony to the injustices migrants have been experiencing at the facility, which housed over 800 detainees as of Jun. 13. She described the “horrendous” conditions inside the facility and how agents put down an uprising in the facility with tear gas and pepper balls in June.

“The reason there was an uprising was because people were not fed for 20 hours,” she said.

“The meals keep getting further and further apart,” Ms. O’Leary said. “People are being served frozen, spoiled and moldy food on a regular basis.”

ICE did not respond to an email requesting comment.

The demonstration included multiple readings from Scripture that traced a theological lineage between themes of migration and family separation in the Book of Ruth to the unity of all people in the body of Christ in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. Organizers also read from sections of Pope Leo XIV’s recent exhortation “Dilexi Te,” in which the pontiff stresses the Catholic imperative to care for migrants. The program also included a moment of remembrance for those who have died in a detention center over the past year. 

Participants write the names of migrants who have died in ICE detention over the course of this past year on the road in front of the facility with chalk blessed by clergy. Credit: Edward Desciak

Their names were written in chalk on the street outside Delaney Hall, a privately owned facility that has already become a site of contention since its reopening in May after being previously closed by the Biden administration. Geo Group, Inc., is being paid as much as $1 billion to run the facility for ICE, part of a massive nationwide expansion of ICE’s detention capacity. The center has sparked legal challenges from Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and others who argue that ICE renovated the facility without the necessary paperwork, sparking safety concerns. Mayor Baraka was previously detained by ICE at a demonstration there on May 9.

During the public witness, a white van with blacked-out windows and plain lettering that read “GEO TRANSPORT INC” left the detention center, and one of the organizers shouted that it was one of the vans used by ICE to transport migrants in and out of the facility. America sought confirmation from ICE that the van was used to transport migrants, but did not receive an answer by the time of publication.

The scene was punctuated by the sounds of blaring horns responding to “Honk 4 Freedom” signs along the industrial road where the gathering occurred, as people were barred from entering the parking lot of the facility. Security staff watched the peaceful public witness from the other side of a towering barbed wire fence that separated the windowless compound from the people outside. There were no confrontations with authorities.

The proceedings oscillated between prayer and speeches deploring not only the current crisis but the longstanding failure of the U.S. immigration system to treat migrants with dignity. Rosa Santana, the co-executive of the Envision Freedom Fund, an immigration and criminal justice advocacy organization, called on the Catholic community to carry their activism forward.

“Jesus was a refugee,” Ms. Santana said. “Jesus was an asylum seeker. He left his country because he was being persecuted. There is no difference between him and the people being held here.”

“As people of faith, we have privilege, and we need to use that privilege,” she said. “We need to be more out there with the community. You have that power. Use your power to amplify the voices of those who cannot talk right now.” 

“The community is terrorized,” she said. “Every day, they are afraid to come out of their homes.”

Ms. Sanatana mentioned a recent event in the Archdiocese of Newark, one that did not draw any participation from Catholic clergy. “This is where you need to go,” she urged the priests at Delaney Hall today.

“You need to be that church, to bring back the Gospel, but also the resources to people that need it,” Ms. Santana said.

At this event there was no lack of representation from the Archdiocese of Newark. The Most Rev. Manuel A. Cruz, who was born in Cuba before emigrating to the United States as a boy, was among the archdiocesan clergy at the demonstration. He delivered impassioned remarks in English and Spanish.

Bishop Cruz talked about an experience he had this past summer returning to New Jersey from a retreat overseas. While he was traveling back to the United States, he was pulled aside and asked to show his passport after he had boarded the plane.

“I was frightened. I said to myself, ‘I will never see America again. I will never go back to my roots again,’” he remembered. “And that fear was so small compared to the fear that goes on inside [the detention facility]. My fear is absolutely nothing compared to the pain and sorrow that goes on in there.”

Parishioners from the Church of St. Francis Xavier gather in front of Delaney Hall. Credit: Edward Desciak

The event included participants from all over the New York metropolitan area. Representatives of the migrant ministry from the Church of St. Francis Xavier in Manhattan were one of many groups that made the trek to the detention center. Ed Poliandro, a member of St. Francis Xavier’s steering committee for the migrant ministry, described the journey to Newark as a “pilgrimage” for his parish community in a phone interview with America.

He noted how powerful it was “to see the barbed wire and then to hear the story of families waiting in a thunderstorm to see their loved ones inside.” The families were forced to wait in the pouring rain, standing next to barbed wire fences. And yet, they stayed, fearing that if they moved, they would not be able to see their loved ones. 

“The families are prophetic in their conquering of fear, in their demonstration of love. They are my prophets. They are my saints,” Mr. Poliandro said.

Oct. 22 was the first of two days of national public witness planned by the “One Church, One Family” campaign. The second will be held on Nov. 13, the feast day of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, the patron saint of immigrants.

Mr. Poliandro and his fellow parishioners expressed gratitude for the event organizers and said that they were inspired to take further action. “I left sad and outraged,” he said. “But I left feeling empowered. I know what I need to do now.”

Another parishioner who joined the group, Beverley Johnstone, noted the diversity of people who showed up. “There were young people that were there. There was a group of students,” she said. “Sisters came down from Ossining, from Maryknoll, and some of them were in walkers or canes, but they came anyhow and stood witness…. These people will take home pictures and stories from this and spread it to their communities,” she said. 

“We can’t be neutral about this injustice.”

Edward Desciak is an O'Hare Fellow at America Media.